'A page-turning blast.' Times
'Genuinely affecting ... a very funny book.' Guardian
'Burstingly alive and engaging.' Telegraph
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED HIS BLOODY PROJECT.
'I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.'
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman suspects charismatic psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite of involvement in a death in her family. Determined to find out more, she becomes a client of his under a false identity. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents both sides: the woman's notes and the life of Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling, page-turning and wickedly humorous meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
Graeme Macrae Burnet is among Scotland's leading contemporary novelists. He lives and works in Glasgow, where he studied English literature, before studying further at the University of St Andrews and then working in television and teaching overseas. In 2013 he was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, and he now writes full-time. Best known for his dazzling Booker-shortlisted second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), he is also the author of two novels set in France and written in a style influenced by the Belgian novelist Georges Simenon: The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau (2014) and The Accident on the A35 (2017). His fourth novel, Case Study (2021), consists of a series of notebooks apparently sent to the author in 2020 to aid his research into a rogue 1960s psychotherapist. The notebooks reveal the story of a young woman convinced that this charismatic therapist was responsible for her sister's suicide. Determined to get to the bottom of his role in her sister's death, she assumes an alter ego and presents herself as a client to him. Graeme has appeared at literary festivals in Australia, the USA, Germany, India, Russia, Spain, France, Korea, Denmark and Estonia. His novels have been translated into more than 20 languages and achieved bestseller status in several countries.
Title: Case Study
Author: Burnet, Graeme Macrae
ISBN: 9781913393441
Binding:
Publisher: Saraband
Publication Date: 2022-04-14
Number of Pages: 288
Weight: 0.2001 kg
'Enormous fun ... a mystery and a psychological drama wrapped up in one. Case Study is a triumph.'
-- Alex Preston, Observer
'Brilliant, bamboozling ... Burnet captures his characters' voices so brilliantly that what might have been just an intellectual game feels burstingly alive and engaging.'
-- Jake Kerridge, Telegraph
Sinister and cleverly done ... punctures the myth-making of the period.
-- Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail
What's real and what's not is beside the point in this skilful portrait of a disturbed woman and her encounters with an experimental 1960s psychotherapist ... Both strands quickly become compelling ... I was hooked like a fish.
-- Leyla Sanai, Spectator
'A thrilling investigation into the nature of sanity and identity'
-- Alice O'Keefe, Bookseller
Poses questions about the nature of the self and the authenticity of identity ... fine comic passages ... shed[s] light on the dark places of the mind ... He is an uncommonly interesting and satisfying novelist.
-- Allan Massie, Scotsman
Undoubtedly one of the best books of the year.
-- Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae
A masterclass of diversion ... blurring the lines of fiction and reality ... serious and witty at once ... an enthralling read.
-- Heather McDaid, The Skinny
'A novel of mind-bending brilliance. Graeme Macrae Burnet is a master of muddying the waters, of troubling ideas of truth and identity, fiction and documentary, and Case Study shows him at the height of his powers'
-- Hannah Kent
